ISIS beheads 82-year-old archaeologist in Palmyra, Syrian official says.
SIS militants have beheaded an 82-year-old archaeologist who had been in charge of overseeing the ancient site at Palmyra in Syria, a government official said Tuesday.
Syrian state antiquities chief Maamoun Abdulkarim told Reuters that the family of Khaled Asaad had informed Abdulkarim that the 82-year-old Asaad had been beheaded earlier in the day and his body hanged from a column in the town's main square.
Asaad's death was also reported by the Syrian state news agency SANA and the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
ISIS seized Palmyra from Syrian government forces in May. In the days and weeks before the city fell, Syrian officials said they had moved hundreds of statues out of concern that they would be destroyed by ISIS fighters.
Members of the terror group drew international condemnation after it released videos showing members destroying artifacts with hammers and drills in a museum in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul and using explosives to wreck other sites.
In March, ISIS members in Iraq razed 3,000-year old Nimrod and bulldozed 2,000-year old Hatra — both UNESCO world heritage sites. At the time, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon described the action as a "war crime."
However, it is not clear what ISIS has done with Palmyra's Roman-era ruins. In June, ISIS blew up two shrines that did not date from Roman times, but were regarded by the militants as pagan and sacrilegious under their strict interpretation of Islam. One of the destroyed tombs belonged to a descendant of the Muslim prophet Muhammad's cousin.
origina post found herhttp://www.foxnews.com/world/2015/08/19/isis-reportedly-beheads-82-year-old-archaeologist-in-palmyra/?intcmp=hpbt1
No comments :
Post a Comment